印度穆斯林州的牛肉禁令

印度穆斯林州的牛肉禁令

印度一些主要为穆斯林居住的州实施牛肉禁令，引起了巨大的社会反响。一些法官认为牛肉的买卖严重地影响了当地人的宗教情绪，督促当局严格实施禁牛肉法令。然而社会各界却有不同意见，一些人认为禁牛令侵犯了他们遵循饮食习惯的自由。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

slaughter 屠杀

enforcement 实施

enthusiastic 狂热的

separatist insurgency 分裂分子的暴乱

religious sentiments 宗教情感

India's only Muslim-majority state hit by beef ban（499words）

By Amy Kazmin in New Delhi

Authorities in India's only Muslim-majority state,Jammu and Kashmir,have been ordered to enforce a 150-year-old beef ban — the latest step in a campaign by Hindu nationalists to stop the slaughter of cows that they revere as deities.

Acting on a public interest litigation brought by a Hindu lawyer,the Jammu and Kashmir High Court instructed law enforcement officials to “strictly enforce” an 1862 ban on slaughtering cows,which had been imposed by the then maharaja,a Hindu.

Kashmir's Muslim population are enthusiastic meat eaters,although the most popular meats — and those prepared for festivals — are lamb and chicken. But beef is eaten by poor families who cannot always afford more expensive meats.

In recent decades,Kashmir's law enforcement agencies have been focused on battling a violent separatist insurgency and social unrest by Kashmiri Muslims,and paid little heed to a beef ban buried in the statute books.

But the two Hindu judges of the high court urged the police chief to take firm action against the slaughter and sale of beef after a petition that said such practices “severely affected religious sentiments” of the state's Hindu minority.

“Kashmiris are lamb eaters not beef eaters,but the ban is provocative,” said Basharat Peer,author of Curfewed Nights,a celebrated memoir about growing up at the height of the Kashmiri separatist insurgency.

“It is just another effort to promote cultural hegemony of the Hindu nationalists. It's none of their business what we eat.”

The decision to enforce Kashmir's beef ban comes amid growing public fears that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is imposing the dietary restrictions of some of India's religious faiths on the entire population — ostensibly out of respect for “religious sentiments”.

In March,the BJP government in the state of Maharashtra introduced a draconian ban on the sale and consumption of beef,which Christians and Muslims said was a clear violation of their right to follow their own dietary traditions and habits.

Mumbai is also in the midst of a public furore over a four-day ban on the sale of any meat in the city — and in the entire state of Rajasthan — during a festival of India's Jain community,a minority who are strict vegetarians.

“It isn't about meat. It isn't about religion. It is about using state power to impose your preferences on another in a free country,” Chetan Bhagat,the best-selling Indian author told his 5.6m Twitter followers,commenting on the Mumbai ban. “The state,government and laws in a democracy are designed to protect people's freedom not take it away.”

About 30 per cent of Indians are vegetarians but many believe they are on a spiritually higher plane than their meat-eating compatriots and often try to promote vegetarianism in public life.

In the state of Madhya Pradesh,for example,Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan,a member of the BJP,has opposed proposals to provide regular eggs to poor children as part of a state programme to battle malnutrition.